Wikipedia

Berik language

Berik
Sewan
Native toIndonesia
RegionTor Atas district, Sarmi Regency
Native speakers
(1,200 cited 1994)[1]
Foja Range (Tor–Kwerba)
Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3bkl
Glottologberi1254

Berik (Sewan) is a Papuan language spoken in Indonesia.[2] Speakers are located in four village groups on the Tor River, in Sarmi Regency, Papua Province.[3]

US linguist John McWhorter cited Berik as an example of a language which puts concepts "together in ways more fascinatingly different from English than most of us are aware".[4] Illustrating this, in the phrase Kitobana (meaning "[he] gives three large objects to a male in the sunlight"), affixes indicating time of day, object number, object size, and gender of recipient are added to the verb.[4]

Locations

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In Sarmi, Berik is spoken in:[1]

  • Tor Atas District
    • Beu Village
    • Bota-Bora Village
    • Dangken Village
    • Kanderjan Village
    • Safron Tane Village
    • Samanente Village
    • Taminambor Village
    • Tenwer Village
    • Toganto Village
    • Waaf village
  • Sarmi Timur District
    • Sewan Village
  • Bonggo District
    • Tarontha Village

Phonology

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Consonants

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Labial Alveolar (Alveolo-)
palatal 		Velar
Nasal m [m] n [n] ng [ŋ]
Plosive &
affricate 		voiceless p [p] t [t] k [k]
voiced b [b] d [d] j [d͡ʑ] g [ɡ]
Fricative f [f] s [s]
Approximant l [l] y [j] w [w]
Tap r [ɾ]

Vowels

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Berik has the common six vowel system (/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ plus /ə/).[5]

Front Central Back
Close i [i] u [u]
Mid e [e] ə [ə] o [o]
Open a [a]

Verbal morphology

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Westrum (1988:150) briefly indicates that Berik encodes whether the action takes place during the day (diurnal) or during the night (nocturnal) in the verb morphology, a rare case of periodic tense whose markers are not easily segmentable.[6]

Sample of diurnal and nocturnal distinctions in the paradigm of the verb ‘to give’ in Berik (Westrum 1988:150, Jacques 2023:5, Table 1).
Period Present Past Future
Diurnal gulbana gulbanant gulbafa
Nocturnal gulbasa gulbafant gubafa

Sample

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  • Angtaneʻ bosna Usafe je gatas tarnap ge nuin. Tesa ga belim taban, ga jes talebowel.
  • "There was once a person named Usafe who lived near the sago acreages. Whenever he finished cutting down a sago tree, he pounded it"[7]

Notes

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  1. ^ a b Berik at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  2. ^ "Asian Linguistics Maps: Maluku (the Moluccas) & West Papua". www.muturzikin.com. Muturzikin. Retrieved 1 December 2025.
  3. ^ Matthews, "Berik Literacy Program", p. 109
  4. ^ a b (McWhorter 2008)
  5. ^ Westrum, "A Grammatical Sketch of Berik," p. 137
  6. ^ Jacques, Guillaume (2023). "Periodic tense markers in the world's languages and their sources". Folia Linguistica. 57 (3): 539–562. doi:10.1515/flin-2023-2013.
  7. ^ Taken from Jones, "In Pursuit of Discourse Particles", p. 130

References

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  • Jones, Linda K. (1992), "In Pursuit of Discourse Particles", in Hwang, Shin Ja J.; Merrifield, William R. (eds.), Language in context: Essays for Robert E. Longacre (PDF), Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington Publications in Linguistics, 107, Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington, pp. 127–36, archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-10-16
  • Matthews, Delle P. (1990), "The Berik Literacy Program: From Illiteracy to National Language Proficiency", Irian: Bulletin of Irian Jaya, 18: 109–24
  • McWhorter, John (21 March 2008), "No Tears for Dead Tongues", Forbes, retrieved 2011-05-09
  • Westrum, Peter N. (1988), "A Grammatical Sketch of Berik", Irian: Bulletin of Irian Jaya, 16: 137